ECC 2010 Day 7 Update

Champéry, SwitzerlandDecember 10, 2010

The Danish men and Swedish women are through to the finals of the Le Gruyère European Curling Championships in Champéry, Switzerland. Denmark will meet Norway in the men's gold medal game and the Swedes face Scotland in the women's game on Saturday.

Playing in his first European Championships, 22-year-old Rasmus Stjerne led his Danish team into final by beating Switzerland's Christof Schwaller by 9-7.

Sweden's Stina Viktorsson also on her first European Championships appearance beat Russia by 7-5 in the women's semi-final.

In the men's game, the Danes were first onto the scoreboard, with a single in the second end, but Danish threes in both the fourth and sixth ends made the difference. Eventually, after a second-half fight-back by the Swiss, Stjerne had a draw to the four-foot ring in the tenth, to score one and win 9-7.

Afterwards, Stjerne said, "It feels good to be in the final. We were playing pretty good today and we're thrilled we've made it through. This was not necessarily our goal from the beginning, but as the tournament developed we realised we had a shot at it, and these two games are showing we're playing quite good curling".

Looking forward to the final against Norway, who he beat in the round-robin, he added, "we're just going to go out and play. They're a really good team, so I'm not expecting too much. We'll see what my team can do - hopefully it'll be enough to get a tight game and we can do it in the end".

Switzerland now play Germany in the men's bronze medal game on Saturday morning.

Sweden opened the women's semi-final with a single steal in the first end, but Russia responded with a two in the second. The Swedes levelled with a single in the third and then, scored two in the fifth for 4-3, after Russia had taken a single in the fourth end.

The breakthrough came in the sixth when Sweden scored two as Russia's Liudmila Privivkova came up short with her final draw.

Eventually, the Swedes accurately took out Russian stone after Russian stone to run the Russians out of the game in the tenth.

Looking forward, a beaming Viktorsson said, "it feels fantastic, and we're really looking forward to the game tomorrow. We'll keep on playing like we did today and we'll have a lot of fun. It feels really good, I thought we were going to win. The team is playing well and we'll do our very best".Before the women's final, Russia will face Switzerland for the women's bronze medal.Men's Semi-final: Denmark 9, Switzerland 7.Women's Semi-final: Sweden 7, Russia 5.

In the B Group, Italy came out on top in the men and went on to beat France 11-5 in the first of the 'best of three' challenge games for a place at the 2011 Men's Worlds. The Czech Republic won the women's B Group event and beat Latvia 7-4 in the first women's world challenge game.